Japan Times Article

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nc20030123a1.htm

As the article says some traders have been using .shn's for some time, I have been using it to get dead shows for over 2 years now. I also use this format to store my music as well. When downloaded the .shn is about 50% of the uncompressed wave file. Compressing is as easy as right clicking and dragging over the window. Uncompressing is a right click and convert to wave file. I have about 160 gigs of .shn's. Not one song is ripped from a store bought cd all the music is from bands that allow taping and trading. I have never tried the winamp plugin though but have been thinking of getting a 100 gig hard drive to use as a music storage device. With my sound blaster 5.1 and live drive my computer could be plugged into my receiver's coaxial input. Gotta love technology and the internet.

http://www.gdlive.com

http://www.furthurnet.org

Both of these sites offer .shn's of quite a few different bands.